Following a ministerial request, the Irish competition regulator (the “CCPC”) has launched on the 15 August 2019 a market study into public liability insurance.
The Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, requested the CCPC to undertake the study using her powers under the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014.
The next step will be for the CCPC to publish a ‘terms of reference’, which will clarify more precisely the scope of their study.
This market study follows a 2005 market study of competition in the non-life insurance sector by the CCPC’s predecessor, the Competition Authority, which produced some limited recommendations in relation to public liability insurance.
Two separate competition investigations into the wider Irish insurance sector (by the CCPC into the Irish motor insurance sector and the European Commission in relation to data pooling by Insurance Ireland) remain ongoing.
In the last two years, the CCPC has used these market study powers to investigate the waste collection market and the residential mortgages market.
Read the full statement here
This update was co-authored by Ronan Scanlan and Kate McKenna of the EU, Competition and Regulatory Group.